What to Put on Your Year-in-Review Holiday Card

Listen to Chrystina discuss what to put on your year-in-review holiday card on Episode 15 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.

This post is sponsored by Minted. All opinions are most definitely my own though. Some links below may be affiliate.

Y’all. I’ve been hand-making a heck of a lot of Christmas cards for a long time. And I just couldn’t do it this year. Between work being crazy, singing with the Philly POPs, starting to work out (why did no one explain to me how much of a time commitment this was?), and doing the relationship thing, there just hasn’t been time to hand-make 150 cards this year.

(Yeah, yeah, I know you all thought I was crazy.)

So I decided I was going to buy my Christmas cards this year. (which is fine because I’ve told myself I will write a really personalized message on each one of them. Because obviously I had to justify it somehow.)

Minted must have known that this was going to be my breaking point year – and I’m so glad they did. Admittedly, I don’t think I’m ever going to go back to hand made. (Because honestly, it’s a lot easier to make handmade birthday cards (that are spread out throughout the entire year) than it is to make all of the cards at the same time.

So I started browsing Minted looking for cards. (Also, I’ve had some excellent luck with Minted in the past for cheese menus and Valentine’s Day cards. So I already knew they were a winner.)

Minted has some really excellent holiday cards. But I just couldn’t bring myself to send out cards with a million photos of myself on it. Yes, I’ve got a lovely boyfriend, but still after four years I can’t seem to bring myself to say, “heeeeey, uh, how would you feel about me sending a photo card of you and me to 200 of my closest friends and coworkers?”

Yeah. We’re not there yet. Google calendar sharing, great. Living together, great. Christmas card publicity. Far too far.

And much to my excitement, Minted had some pretty legit Year in Review cards that didn’t have any photographs on them. It’s like your own customized infographic. A super cute infographic.

There are three types of information that you’re looking for when you’re putting together a Year-In-Review card:

QUANTIFIABLE DATA – keep a tally of all of the things. Whatever noun works for you in this concept. For me (unsurprisingly), it’s number of parties, number of concerts, number of events, number of vacations, etc.
1. TOP MOMENTS – this is the soft, non-quantifiable, data. It’s your top moments of the year. It’s your favorite things you did, it’s the milestones that you hit, it’s the things that you’ll absolutely remember 10 years from now.
2. THE EVERYDAY – sure, milestones are great, but there’s also the day-to-day things that make it interesting. Did you have a routine that you did everyday? Was there a certain thing you always did when you were happy? Did you choose a word for the year and live according to it for 12 months? The everyday can be just as important as the milestones.

Now that you know what you’re looking for, it’s a 4 step process.

Step 1: Gather your tools

All you need is a place to take notes. Pen. Paper. Your pick. The goal is to write down anything that you find from the year that is meaningful to you. You’ll pare it down, group, and consolidate it later.

Step 2: Gather your data, aka, 8 Places to Look for Information to Put On Your Year-In-Review Holiday Cards

Social media. You’ve got photos of all the food you’ve eaten, places you’ve been, and people you’ve visited spread out all over the internet. Some are photos, some are tweets, some are FB posts. Scroll back through them all to piece the year back together and to tell the story.
Photos. Another obvious location to find information, but the list would be incomplete without it.
Your calendar. Admittedly, I’m addicted to my Google calendar. I would pretty much be lost without it. I actually don’t have to make any decisions any day because I just do what it tells me. That means it has a pretty solid record of what’s happened in the past year. Same with a paper planner if that’s your jam. Even your work calendar could be useful if you use it for personal things after hours. If it was important enough to make the calendar during the year, it might be important enough to make the year-in-review.
Your journal. If you’re the kind of lad or lady who journals, flip back through it to see what happened in your year. You could even count the number of journal entries and that could be a milestone in itself.
Your passion project deliverables. Haha. Oh goodness. I’m the worst. My consultant life has made its way into my blog. What do I mean by that? My side hustles are: singing, podcasting, blogging, and hosting parties; this makes the deliverables (outputs of the activity): concerts, podcasts, blog posts, and parties. These are absolutely quantifiable. I can look at a concert schedule, I can count how many podcast episodes I released, I can look back at the blog post count, and I can look at my Eventbrite to see how many party invitations I sent out this year. Think about your passion projects, what have your milestones been? Number of scarves crocheted, how many pumpkins you harvested, how many new grandchildren were born. The possibilities are endless.
Your living space. Take a walk around your house. Do you have a new favorite tea that you found? Did you switch to a new makeup routine? Look at the counters and in the cabinets to see what sorts of things you use in the everyday. Did you manage to keep a plant alive for a whole year? (That absolutely was not me.) Did you finally buy your first big-people couch? Did you take apart a garbage disposal for the first time? Look around and see what sticks out to you and makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
Your credit card statement. I know this sounds weird, but your money spending history will definitely give you a good idea of how you spent your year: the big things and the little things. You might have gone to Starbucks 73 times this year. (Good for you. I support you.) You might have finally invested in that compost service that you have to pay for every month. You might have spent a heck of a lot of money at the comic book store. Look at the trail you’ve left for yourself and see where you’ve been.
Your travels. While “your travels” does not have a concrete location to look, you can think back on it in your brain. Figuring out how many places I visited in a year, even if it was just different cities in my same state (hey, Pennsylvania’s pretty big!), were definitely the sign of part of an adventure.

Step 3: Vet the information

Take a look at the information you have and put things together that go together, summarize the quantifiable data, and pull out the one-offs for a top 10 list or call out boxes.

Step 4: Type all of the information into your Minted design of choice

Y’all. This was so easy.

And I imported a list of addresses that I had and they addressed all of my envelopes for me… for free. (And not just because this was sponsored. It was actually free.) It was pretty much the greatest.

(PS. If I know you in real life and you’re on my Christmas mailing list, please don’t read the bottom photo too closely just yet. Wait for the real thing.)

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Have you ever done a Year-In-Review card? I’d love to hear about your process to make it happen. As I said, I don’t think I’m going back to handmade anytime soon, but I’m definitely intrigued by these booklet holiday cards, too.

Hope that all of you are making excellent progress on your holiday cards. As for me… I have 6 written and have approximately 120 left to go. It’s a good thing I’ve still got a few weeks.

PS. If you’re not sure where to start with sending out your holiday cards, I’ve written a post for you writ here: here are your next steps.

PPS. Yes. I feel a little weird about sending out a card about all the cool things I did this year. Part of it feels a little, “hey look at me and how cool I am.” The other part of me is telling me three things: (a) these are your friends, they actually want to know what you’re up to, (b) you shouldn’t need to be married, have kids, or have a pet to have a year-in-review card, and (c) if you try to write something awesome they did during the year on the back, it doesn’t make it as bad. Right? Unclear. That said. I’m pretty flipping happy with my decision.